Paper 3343

Abstract

In traditional analyses, the semantics of comparison is wholly introduced by the comparative morpheme (more, -er), with the standard marker (than) merely marking the standard phrase as a semantic argument of the comparative morpheme. This paper departs from this standard analysis and argues for a more transparent compositional semantics, where both the comparative morpheme and standard marker contribute to the semantics of comparison (similar in spirit to Schwarzschild 2014) by providing evidence from Malayalam non-adjectival comparatives.